Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Alfred-Pellan.
The Bloc Québécois has already said it is in total disagreement with the Conservative budget. This budget is totally unacceptable for a number of reasons, some of which I will explain now.
Quebec and Quebeckers have been going through a major economic crisis, like many other regions, and were expecting much more vigorous efforts to re-start the economy. It is important to point out that the crisis now affecting other provinces arrived in Quebec quite a while ago.
When we talk about the crisis in industry in general, in manufacturing and especially forestry in Quebec, the areas where most of these industries are concentrated have been in crisis mode for four or five years now. Various communities in Quebec and the vast majority of its regions, whether involved in pulp and paper, softwood lumber, forestry or furniture, have been seriously affected for many years now.
We would naturally have expected the Conservative budget to come to the assistance of these communities and make up some of the lost time. The Conservatives have been doing nothing to support the forestry and manufacturing industries for quite a few years now. We would have expected them to take action for once. We said to ourselves, “Finally, they are going to make funds available, as they said they would”. What we saw instead, though, was that Quebec was completely forgotten in this budget.
The Conservative budget provides $170 million for the forestry and manufacturing sectors in comparison with $2.7 billion for the automobile industry in Ontario, which is generally agreed to have been in a crisis situation for six months or at most a year. Companies in Quebec have been closing their gates one after another, some temporarily but others permanently.
It is completely incomprehensible that the government is being so unfair in this budget. When we look again at what will be given to Ontario, we see a new agency for southern Ontario with a budget of $1 billion. Once more, there is an awful lot of money for Ontario. We said it before and will say it again: this is totally unfair to Quebec.
That is one of the measures that lead us to say it is impossible for members who really defend the interests of Quebec to vote for a budget like this, which deprives Quebec of large amounts of money and sends them elsewhere.
Another important issue is employment insurance. Rather than eliminating the two week waiting period, the Conservatives have chosen to do something—and will be supported in this by the Liberals—that will not help all the working people who lose their jobs. If the two-week waiting period had been eliminated, everyone who gets employment insurance would have been affected. The Conservatives decided instead, though, to extend the benefits for another five weeks at the end, when many people may have already found new jobs. Therefore it will cost less. Once again, the Conservatives are playing politics and saving money on the backs of people who have lost their jobs. Around 50% of people who lose their jobs do not qualify for employment insurance anyway. That is completely unfair. The Conservatives have refused to make employment insurance more accessible. The measures I have suggested would have really helped everyone who loses his or her job.
I was saying that the crises in the forestry and manufacturing sectors have hit Quebec especially hard in the past four or five years. Such measures might have been seen as a sign of the Conservative government's compassion for people losing their jobs. Not so. It is implementing a measure that will help only a few and gloating over its fine politics. That makes no sense, and we will most certainly oppose it.
There is another major item of discord, and I do not think we have heard the end of it, either. Apparent in yesterday's budget was the Conservative government's clear intention to put a cap on equalization. To do so unilaterally and without consultation is totally inappropriate and fails to respect the jurisdictions of those involved. Quebec is going to lose $1 billion in the next fiscal year and nearly $2 billion the following year. I can hardly imagine the difficult choices that will have to be made in Quebec.
Will educational and daycare services have to be cut. Will there be cuts to health care services, when people are already having a hard time finding a family doctor? These measures will have a very negative impact on Quebeckers.
As I was saying, will family policy be affected? While Quebec has been a leader for a number of years, the government is going to cause it to lose ground with measures like these, unacceptably.
By heightening the fiscal imbalance—I mentioned equalization—the Conservative government is breaking earlier promises, just as it did when it reiterated its intention to walk all over Quebec's jurisdiction over securities. I return to the subamendment proposed by the Bloc Québécois. It refers to a motion passed unanimously by the members of the National Assembly that says that the intention expressed by the Conservative Government in recent months to create a single securities commission is in contravention of Quebec's exclusive jurisdiction in this matter. It also is counter to the expressed wish of the Government of Quebec, which has made it clear that it is prepared to take this matter to the Supreme Court. It is quite out of the question for the Conservative government to heighten the crisis we are already in and to announce its intention to use this budget to open the subject and once again increase tensions between the governments of Quebec and Canada.
I add in closing that this Conservative government still without provision in its budget to implement the Kyoto accord is once again in conflict with Quebec's major economic interests. Many years ago, a system was set up in Quebec to reduce pollution significantly. Renewable energies and clean electricity are used with Hydro Quebec. Businesses and individuals have taken steps that have made Quebec a leader. Implementation of the Kyoto accord and the creation of a carbon emissions trading market would encourage Quebeckers and return to them the funds they have paid out of their own pockets.
I close by saying that this budget is totally contrary to the interests and values of Quebeckers.